Jousting at the windmills of hypocrisy, scammers, and other stuff that irritates me.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Exxon

So the retiring CEO is getting a $400 million retirement package. Anyone have a problem with this? Other than the liberal media that LOVES to throw these sorts of numbers out of context in front of everyone without ANY analysis or looking into what the numbers really mean. Or the politicians who see this as an opportunity to make hay and stir up people's class envy?Look inside the retirement package and you'll see that it includes a lot of long term stuff that will go for some time. In addition, it's indexed to the amount of growth that Exxon has experienced while he's been at the helm. Remember that Exxon bought Mobil, effectively doubling the size of the company during his tenure. That increased the market capitalization considerably.In addition, Exxon has performed relatively well (not even counting the last year) over his tenure as well, the stock going from $28/share in July of 03 to the 60's over the last several months. (Full Disclosure- I bought XOM at 32, sold it at 59 over the last couple years). They've paid dividends, and showed a profit almost every quarter since he took over.The company has performed well, he should be paid well as a result.The retirement plans that irritate the bejesus outta me are the ones where the company has been driven into bankruptcy by piss poor decisions, and the CEO's and VP's get millions to leave. The funniest thing about this though, are the politicians who are whining about this sort of thing. Like they have ANY room to talk about cushy retirement plans. But let's take a look at the proposal on the table by Senator Byron Dorgan. Dorgan said he will push to win passage of his legislation that would impose a windfall profits tax on big oil companies and rebate that money to consumers, unless the companies used their earnings to explore for and produce more energy.Now think about that....explore and produce more energy. So, kinda like drilling in ANWAR? Or off the coast of Florida? Or in the Gulf of Mexico? Let's see where Senator Dorgan falls in the votes for that sort of thing....Ah, not so much. Yeah, Senator Dorgan voted against exploration in ANWAR. How about removing the EPA limits on refineries, making it easier to build new ones and expand capacity? Nope, fought against that as well.So, Senator Dorgan, what exactly are you wanting here? Oh yeah, headlines. Forgot we're talking about a politician here.

It's all about supply and demand. The liberal, treehuggers, who have an agenda, limit the supply, the price goes up, and they blame the oil companies, who are operating at 100% refinery capacity. Not much they can do, other than raise the price. A strong economy requires consumption of energy and not only is the US economy charging forward with strength, but China, India, and other places with large populations are doing so as well. This obviously increased the demand, worldwide, which drives up prices. Standard supply and demand, it's not difficult to figure out.What Senator Dorgan COULD do, as a politician who's obviously concerned with protecting the American public (whew, barely able to type that), is offer to remove federal gas taxes from the cost of gasoline. That is approximately $.40/gallon right there. I don't know about you, but that's over $8/fillup for me. I'd take that.But you know how it is with Dimwitocrats....they've never met a tax they didn't like. Don't plan on seeing that happen. Ever.